As digital technology advances, more and more content is digitized and distributed in various digital formats, such as music, motion pictures, television shows, books, etc. One important characteristic of digital content is the ease of making a copy of the digital content without impeding the quality of the copy of the digital content. As a result, copyright infringement becomes a serious problem with digital content. Many vendors of digital content tackle the problem by employing various digital right management (DRM) schemes to restrict copying and/or modifying of digital content. Some more restrictive DRM schemes attempt to limit the number of times that a copy of digital content can be played.
Currently, some conventional DRM schemes are compatible with only certain types of digital media rendering devices (also known as digital media players). As such, an audio file encrypted using a particular DRM scheme may be playable using digital music players made by a certain manufacturer. For instance, songs purchased from iTunes® store operated by Apple, Inc. of California are playable by only digital music players made by Apple, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. (e.g., iPod®), but not digital music players made by other manufacturers. Thus, a consumer who has legally purchased a digital copy of a song protected by a DRM scheme compatible with one digital music player may not play the digital copy using another digital music player if the two digital music players support different DRM schemes. Such inoperability between different DRM schemes causes great inconvenience to the consumer when the consumer switches between digital music players supporting different DRM schemes.